Olympics 2012: It takes time for turnarounds

So India has crashed to its fourth defeat in four matches in the men’s hockey event at the London Olympics. The cynics will say we told you so and, perhaps, cry for the head of Michael Nobbs, chief coach. But Hockey India would do well to stick by Nobbs for the full term of his contract.

For far too long has Indian hockey suffered the caprices of its fans and officials and armchair ‘experts.’ Any coach needs time to understand the psyche of his team and get it to play to his plan. If that team is Indian, the time required is often even more. For one, the coach, especially if he is a foreigner, has to understand, or make himself understood by, players speaking different tongues and having varied cultures. For another, like it or not, Indian teams generally suffer from mental fragility, something that has been on open display at the hockey arena in London.

Once the Indians lost a close opening game against The Netherlands, it all seemed to fall apart for them.

Even in Sunday’s game against South Korea, once the latter had weathered the Indian pressure and scored the second goal with just 11 minutes left on the clock, the Indians threw in the towel, conceding two more goals in the last two minutes to turn a close game into a rout. This tendency to let the shoulders droop and the morale sag when the going gets tough cannot be corrected by any coach or psychoanalyst in just a few months.

A turnaround, particularly in the mind, takes time.